Known is a thermal recording material which forms a recorded portion by thermal energy from a thermal head using a color-forming reaction between an electron-donating compound and electron-accepting compound, a thermal fusion transfer or a sublimation transfer, or an ink jet recording material which obtains a recorded portion by ink jet. Since these recording materials are relatively inexpensive, usable with compact recording machines and easy to maintain, they are used as recording medium for facsimile and for computers, as well as in a wide range of fields.
Recently, various information recording materials have been rapidly improved in print stability and can record variable information at a high speed. Because of this advantage, these information recording materials have been used for betting tickets, lottery tickets, commuter passes, train tickets and the like. When the information recording materials are used for these applications, particularly for the pari-mutuel tickets and lottery tickets which have cashability, modification and counterfeit prevention is needed.
As a method for preventing counterfeit of the recording materials, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 1999-165463 discloses adding watermark to a paper support; and Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication No. 1998-315620 discloses using a paper support having embedded therein a tape-shaped security element which has a film and a heat-sensitive recording layer formed on the film.
However, these conventional techniques have the following disadvantages: missing dots appear in recorded images, especially in the record images formed in the area where security element is embedded, degrading the quality of the recorded images; operation efficiency of production is low because wrinkles occur when supercalendering is effected; in the produced recording materials, the surface of the area where security elements are embedded are slightly thicker than the other parts, leading to a lack of smoothness (hereinafter referred to as “uneven thickness”); when the produced recording materials are rolled up, the roll is corrugated due to the uneven thickness.
An object of the present invention is to provide an antifalsification recording paper using a security element-embedded paper support, the recording paper being free of the quality degradation of recorded images such as missing dots on the surface of a recording layer at a security element portion (the portion at which a security element is embedded and its vicinity), free of uneven thickness on the surface of the recording material, occurrence of wrinkles during production and occurrence of corrugation when rolled up, and being easy to produce.